Different approaches are used in the computer world to combine packages of data. For example, in the popular tool of relational databases, programmers may combine data by connecting separate tables. For example, in the popular mechanism of the spreadsheet, data or information structures are often combined by references from one spreadsheet to another. This makes it difficult for programs to work on the unified conglomerate of data. As a result, these approaches are both too difficult for many beginning and mid-level users.
Throughout the computer field, people need to combine data and information structures from different sources for aggregated use. Without limitation, it is desirable to have such structures able to add detail in virtually any amount; able to cope with contradictions among datasets; able to consider the consequences of alternative structures; able to bring additional detail into stored information; able to allow varying structures of connections, as wanted in different contexts; able to allow incompatible alternatives to be stored as separate packages of connected cells; able to hide information which is deeply connected to other information; and able to present and analyze the same data in different sequences and structures by adding new connections and annotations.
The present invention builds on the teachings of U.S. Pat. No. 6,262,736 by the present inventor, Theodor Holm Nelson (hereinafter the prior invention and hereby incorporated by reference in its entirety). This prior invention is a hyperspace constructed of cells having paired connectors that define dimensions. Complex tissues of the cells in linear and cyclical ranks can be navigated and manipulated by use of a stepper and various view rasters. The types of cells may include text cells, audio cells, video cells, and executable cells. By the use of clone cells and a clone dimension, the cells may be duplicated or referenced by transclusion. This has been implemented in computer software that is commonly now referred to as the ZigZag system. As such, the existing ZigZag system went a long way towards providing the desirable features noted above, but it does not provide all of those features and it does not provide features for extending to very large systems of linked data, or different variations of data.